This piece came from a project in my Cinematic Arts class. We were learning about screenplay format, how to write them, what to write, and were given a prompt. “You wake up, get ready for the day, and along the way realize that someone is in your house”. The idea was to make a normal morning, and I took that to create probably the weirdest morning possible to us...but not to my character!

The pieces within Sacrilegious Mad Cow Fever Dream were written over nearly six months. Breaking my writing into segments allowed me to connect various thoughts, all converging on one theme: the fetishization of women of color. Drawing from my experiences as a black woman who dates outside my race, many sections reflect thoughts that occupy my mind daily. Expressing my romanticism often leads me to be perceived as a porn category by men. My collection links the impact of porn on the brain to mad cow disease, highlighting how black women are treated like meat. The first piece in this collection, Ebony Tumor, emerged from my anger at my ex-boyfriend. His words during our relationship linger as a reminder that, before anything else, I am seen as black. Through writing this piece, I confronted and reconciled with my anger. Industry Standard serves as a midpoint, commentary on the porn industry and how it treats black women. References to prostitution and pornographic material aim to address how it’s inherently racist. While I've never had firsthand experiences with either, Barely Legal/Suckling Pig draws inspiration from my experience of sexual assault, where I realized my race was commodified. When getting feedback on this piece, I was often met with criticism of how bleak and shocking it was. However, I thought the over-the-topness conveyed my feelings perfectly, my anger, sadness, shock, and everything in between manifesting in extremely graphic imagery.

Since October 7th, thousands of innocent Palestinian lives have been lost in what is referenced to as a humanitarian crisis by the United Nations. Half of Gaza's population includes children, who are innocent of war crimes, yet are victims of this conflict. As many in Gaza can not share their stories and their voice right now, I wanted to convey my emotions surrounding what I have been seeing on social media and in the news. The poem is not intended to be biased or prejudiced, simply an accurate representation of what millions of Palestinians are experiencing in this very moment.

Teenage slander is not a new phenomenon. It's been happening since the concept of a teenager arose in contemporary society. However, the critiques that Generation Z faces are unique in multiple senses - primarily in the role that empathy, self-reflection, and isolation play in the development of our generation. This piece explores the facets of adult relationships with youth. Simply put, this piece is an insight into the teenage mind and a tutorial on how to be kind to your local teenager.

This piece is about the change I faced going from childhood to adolescence, from feeling joyful to dealing with mental health issues. I'm proud of this piece because it's relatable and uses strong imagery to capture feelings that sometimes can be hard to describe. I hope this poem impacts those who feel like it can't get better by showcasing that feelings are ever changing and that there is beauty in hardship and growth.

This Poem about the writer's, Sage's, experiences with Cerebral Palsy.

This flash fiction piece is based off of a photograph I saw of a paper-mache man. A face from a magazine was pasted on to the head, and its smile looked as if it was in pain. I was inspired to write this piece about the smiling man in pain, and I wanted to describe why he was in such agony.

Each of the poems in this collection are about a different point in time: “Pacing as a Mode of Transportation” is about the present, “Look How Tall You’ve Gotten” is about the future, and “Mom’s Jar of Teeth: an Incomplete Set” is about the past. “Pacing as a Mode of Transportation” explores avoiding progress for the sake of comfort. Ironically, it was the one that gave me the most trouble. I couldn’t seem to ground it in just one “perfect” idea. To fix this, I structured the poem around borrowed lines from multiple-choice Driver’s Ed tests (the lines you see in italics) and wrote it in a sort of instructional manner, like the narrator was giving and receiving advice. I wanted to evoke the feeling of a deer caught in headlights (thus the line “my deer”). “Look How Tall You’ve Gotten” was written in response to the prompt “letter to your future self”. For this one, I wanted to capture the feeling of a distant future self in the request for postcards. (When I think of postcards, I think of physical and emotional distance, since they aren’t as personal as a letter.) “Mom’s Jar of Teeth: an Incomplete Set” is about growing up and what you lose along the way. These “teeth” —or rather memories— aren’t so important that you can’t live without them, but sometimes you want them back for sentimentality’s sake.

In a world where one often searches for individually, Kaleidoscope poses the question of its possibility. Exploring the notion that everyone is a product of their environment, especially their family, the narrator questions if they are anything outside of a stolen identity.

I wrote this poem when I was sad about many of the changes happening in my life. I have always had a connection to my neighbors' backyard, because I used to go down there to help them water the plants and pull weeds. Recently, the thought occurred to me that one day, the jasmine vines that have been there since I was a child will be torn down and forgotten, and this idea led me to a general reflection on the brevity of childhood joy. This poem is a celebration of all that joy and is a fun, creative piece set in my childhood home.

This non-fiction hybrid piece is about a formative place from my childhood: Stanford Sierra Camp. I’ve been going there ever since I was little, and I’m so grateful for all of the memories I’ve made there. In this piece, I collected some of my favorite memories and wrote them as fragments—it emphasizes how fast time flies without us even realizing. I wanted to add a lot of imagery throughout this piece. My main goals for this piece was to invite the reader into the scene and to have the reader be a part of the thrilling adventure that Sierra Camp has given me.

This poem shares my experience riding the Caltrain and witnessing someone's suicide attempt mindfulness and intentionality. "City Lights" is a poem of both mourning and celebration of life. We've lost so many to mental illness, and my goal is not to glorify that experience, but to shed light, not to convince or persuade, on the beauty of life. We have so many poems left to write. This is my love letter to my community of fellow humans navigating this harrowing and spectacular beauty we call living.

This piece is a 498 piece of fiction, either classified as a short story or a flash fiction, describing a wintry scene where a vengeful boy crouches in a hut, where he is alone next to a fire, setting old family photos ablaze with no remorse. The question is: why? It took a lot of descriptive language to wrap up this piece, and while it was short, it was definitely an interesting creative process to go through while making it.

TW: Self-harm, War, Death. This intimate collection of love letters to my three beloveds—my ancestry, my friends, my family. I explore how grief, frustration, anger, and confusion weave into the determination of love. Love coaxes brutality. But the gentleness of endearment never ceases. A Lesson in Pho tackles my love for the famous Vietnamese dish while coming to terms with its brutal history. I write dearly about my favorite dish while contrasting it with my family’s history with hunger and food. On Thunderstorms is a love letter to my friend and her worldview. During thunderstorms, she goes out in the rain to look for her neighbor's dog for hours just to make sure he had a dry place to wait out the storm. I wanted to capture her worldview and juxtapose it with people’s inability to understand her motives for running into the rain. Her delicacy in handling the old dog contrasts with the thunderstorm. To My Mother reflects my mixed feelings about my mother. Though I love her dearly, I harbor resentment for her. In this poem, I navigate the confusion behind wanting something more from her while recoiling from her touch. It's a stifling emotion with no name yet in this piece, I hoped to name it. Through my collection, Love Letters, I hope to navigate the nuance in not just love, but the complexities that love siphons.

This poem was born out of flame - figuratively but also in a more physical, personal way. I often use my surroundings and experiences to influence my writing. My style of poetry is spur-of-the-moment: words flowing out to try and describe the perfect image I have in my head. This poem transforms an everyday practice such as lighting a match into something more beautiful and inspiring.

A mixture of my imagination and the real invasion of the Polish town Bialystok.

This collection is meant to create a multidimensional experience of the intricacies of morning life on a farm. Through the lens of rural life, my narrative aims to symbolize broader philosophical ideas in society. “Flight” is a contrapuntal poem that explores the relationship between humanity and nature. It invites readers to navigate its landscape on their own, with its flexibility in interpretation. The constantly-shifting role that the ducks and their eggs play symbolizes the delicate balance between creation and consumption. “Farm” explores the rural setting in a broader way, by capturing the quiet symphony of a summer morning on the farm. The narrative is paced slower and more linearly than “Flight,” juxtaposing the unhurried, routine cadence of farm life, with a fast-paced and non-chronological one. In this way, “Farm” is focused on the timeless ebb and flow of a summer morning on the farm. “Cornfield” is a poem written in iambic pentameter that is meant to invoke a sense of tranquility, musicality, while following two farmhands in a budding romance. The use of natural elements grounds the poem in the sensory richness of the environment, creating a celebration of love within the natural world. Through my collection, Ante Meridiem, I aim to portray the nuances in the actions, emotions, and lifestyles that drive life in a rural setting, how these cycles stagnate and change as time passes.

This collection represents three different manifestations of anxiety. Some of us may not be able to cope with it well; others may believe they are coping when they are actually digging themselves into a deeper hole. The first poem, “the gentleman named fear,” describes the experience of intense fear. The eye shape of the poem can be read left to right or as two poems separated by the gap. This poem is inspired by my own experiences of late night anxiety that quickly escalates into night terrors. Often, my anxiety renders me unable to sleep without certain “rituals” like tucking myself securely into the blankets and wearing an eye mask. The second poem, “& so i made myself a cloud machine,” depicts repressing trauma. I loosely based the poem on my tendency to forget about things that make me stressed. However, when I am finally forced to face those things, I often become extremely overwhelmed. The third poem, “how to use a broken sewing machine,” shows the narrator deluding themself into thinking all is right in the world. This is based off of a specific incident when my best friend messaged me about being in a dangerous situation and I was completely unable to help. I was terrified because I couldn’t do anything, so I started telling myself that everything was okay. I knew that if I tried to imagine anything further, even if what I imagined was optimistic, I would spiral and everything would come crashing down.

I spent most of my elementary years in Kentucky. There was a forest in our backyard, and all of the people I met had homes and supportive friends who would help them through tough times. It was happy, and I saw very little suffering on a daily basis. Now, I commute across the length of the east bay and through downtown SF everyday just to get to school, and I saw so many different hardships as my eyes were opened to a cruel new world. Over the past few years, I have become almost indifferent to it through mass exposure. This is an attempt to recognize the suffering and reconcile these two lives; one a distant memory, a fading dream, and the other a cold, harsh reality that is too often ignored. Furthermore, it embodies my struggles with finding motivation to change my plans to help others and the subsequent guilt that comes from abstaining, and my hope that through working together we have the power to improve the world.

A boy writes a letter to his dog Muddy, who is currently battling a mysterious foe called Can Sir.